—Ash
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
REVA
I spendthe first full day of freedom waiting to be dragged back.
That’s really all it is in the end. Waiting.
Waiting for Shiloh’s truck to turn into the lot. Waiting for a knock at the door that isn’t a knock at all, but a command for my obedience. Waiting for Nash to decide enough is enough. Waiting for Shiloh to grin his way inside with some charming little tease about my leash being too tight. Waiting for Ever to appear out of nowhere like a shadow that’s learned how to wear skin.
But no one comes.
No one pounds on the door or kicks it in. No one steals my keys off the motel nightstand like they did the first time and tosses me over their shoulder like I’m something they lost and have every right to reclaim.
The silence is so suspicious it almost feels louder than if they’d shown up.
And I’m more than a little upset by the fact that they don’t care enough to come.
So I use the day for what I can.
I run errands. The mundane kind. Litter and cat food and a cheap dish for Homer because I’m not about to let him eat off motel paper towels like some kind of feral orphan.
I mean, I’m kind of feral, but Homer isn’t. My perfect little kitten deserves a dish to eat out of.
I breathe, or I try to. I honestly jump at shadows all day long. And I sleep like shit all night.
And when the second morning comes, sunlight hazing weakly through the slit in the motel curtains, I wake with a strange, suspended feeling still sitting in my chest. Like maybe this isn’t real.
Like maybe I’ll open the door and find one of them standing there, waiting with folded arms and dark eyes and that particular look men like them wear when they’ve decided your choices are over.
But when I sit up, the room is still mine.
Homer stretches in a bright strip of sun at the end of the bed, back bowed, tiny claws flexing into the cheap comforter. The A/C rattles in the window. Somewhere outside, a truck door slams. A woman laughs. The scentof old coffee, motel detergent, and powdered sugar still lingers from yesterday.
Normal things. Temporary things.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach for the coffee on the nightstand before I remember I drank the last of it cold at midnight.
My gaze catches on the room instead. Not the room, exactly. The feeling of it.
Little things.
A chair that seems angled a little differently than I remember. My bag—not unzipped, exactly, but not as flat as it had been when I laid it down. One of Homer’s toys—a crinkly little mouse I bought at the gas station because I felt guilty for uprooting his whole fuzzy life—slightly farther from the bed than I remember kicking it. I know he hasn’t played with it since we’ve been here. He’s been obsessed with the plastic trash bag hanging over the edge of the trash can.
I go still. The air leaves my lungs in a slow, careful stream.
Ever.My room has his fingerprints all over it even if I can’t see them.
Not because he’s the only one capable of sneaking in. Nash could do it. Shiloh probably could do it faster than the other two combined. But this feels like Ever. Quiet. Methodical. Intimate in the worst way. Nothing obvious. Nothing broken. Just the subtle, skin-crawling certaintythat someone entered my space, touched what was mine, and left, all without my permission.
I should be angry. I stand there in the stale morning light, staring at the room, and wait for the fury to rise.
It doesn’t. Instead, something foreign and unexpected loosens inside me. Hope.
They’re watching.
I knew they weren’t just going to let me walk out of Blackwood House and vanish into the city like a ghost. Men like Nash, Shiloh, and Ever don’t misplace things they’ve decided belong to them.
